Strange Engineering Friday hosted the first $50,000 main event of the weekend during the Summit Racing Equipment Fling at Norwalk presented by Total Seal Piston Rings at Summit Motorsports Park where 400 box entries and 32 no-box entries staged up for the first round.
What started with 32 bottom-bulb hitters turned into two with Jaeden Durst and Jennifer Vignola facing each other in the Laris Motorsports Insurance No-Box final round. Durst let go .015 off the hit, securing the $2,000 No-Box bonus and custom championship trophy by using a substantial starting line advantage over the ‘67 Camaro of Vignola. Durst then went on to combine with the Box field.
The six drivers that reached the ladder included Victor Ellinger, Brian Willingham, Ryan Sparks, Zac Fulcher, Dylan Guy, and Glenn Ferguson Jr. Ellinger was .012 and took .006 at the stripe to move past Willingham, while Fulcher and Sparks were separated by just four-thousandths of a second but it was the dead-on five lap of Fulcher that would advance. Guy was .012 and took .019 for the win over Ferguson Jr.
A door car versus dragster pairing made up half of the semifinals, where Ellinger was .002 and dead-on five to lay down .007 total in the ‘80 Volvo against the five thousandths red light of Guy. On his solo trip down the track, Fulcher was .001 and ran dead-on his dial with a seven to put together .008 total.
With phenomenal laps from both drivers in the semifinals, parking it in the winners circle would not be an easy task for Fulcher or Ellinger. The final was decided by just one thousandth of a second with Ellinger crossing the stripe first to run dead-on three for his first ever Fling winner’s circle. Only minutes before his 50th birthday, Ellinger cashed in for $50,000 on Strange Engineering Friday.
ATI Performance Products $50,000 Saturday will start at 8:30 a.m. with Round 1 of Laris Motorsports Insurance No-Box. Race fans will be able to catch all of the action live exclusively on the @RaceTheFlings YouTube all week long courtesy of Moser Engineering.
For more information, visit www.BracketRaces.com, the Spring Fling Bracket Races Facebook page, or text the word NORWALK to (347) 974-7007 for race updates.
This story was originally published on August 30, 2025. 
The post Vic Ellinger Collects $50,000 on Strange Friday at Summit Racing Fling presented by Total Seal first appeared on Drag Illustrated.